“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

– Galileo Galilei

“No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, or in any other way destroyed, except by the lawful judgment of his peers.”

– The Magna Carta

“To electrify.”

“Hide not your talents, they for use were made.
What’s a sundial in de shade?”

– Benjamin Franklin

“It was 1879..”

“The only limit of our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“When magic returned..”

“..In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky. A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand, showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature..

In 1791 Luigi Galvani published his discovery of bioelectricity, demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which nerve cells passed signals to the muscles. Alessandro Volta’s battery, or voltaic pile, of 1800, made from alternating layers of zinc and copper, provided scientists with a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines previously used. The recognition of electromagnetism, the unity of electric and magnetic phenomena, is due to Hans Christian Ørsted and André-Marie Ampère in 1819–1820. Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821, and Georg Ohm mathematically analysed the electrical circuit in 1827..

While it had been the early 19th century that had seen rapid progress in electrical science, the late 19th century would see the greatest progress in electrical engineering. Through such people as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Ernst Werner von Siemens, Alexander Graham Bell and Lord Kelvin, electricity was turned from a scientific curiosity into an essential tool for modern life, becoming a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution.”

“So far, the researchers have only used the pencil to kill E. coli bacteria in a petri dish. Wayne Hynes, ODU associate professor of Biological Sciences, is helping Laroussi test the pencil for dental uses. Unfortunately, it won’t replace the sharp tools that scrape plaque off the teeth, but it could sterilize dental equipment or kill bacteria that cause gum disease. He cautions that it’s still very early in the research.”